KVR :: u-he » wow, bouncing down Diva in 192khz [View Original Topic]
There are 61 posts in this topic.

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ddeez - Tue May 08, 2012 12:58 am

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I just did a test and noticed a BIG difference in brightness when bouncing my tracks using diva down when my audio engine is set at 192 khz. The thing already sounds beuatiful but it gets even better at 192!! There's a noticeable difference in brightness.

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digitalboytn - Tue May 08, 2012 1:30 am

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LeVzi will be coming over to comment on this very soon

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Howard - Tue May 08, 2012 2:25 am

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To be moderated by "Monsieur Shrug"?

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thermal - Tue May 08, 2012 2:27 am

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i would be very interested to hear from the programmers about using sample rates other than 44.1

is Diva optimised for any particular sample rate, and is it aware of what sample rate it is running at and make any internal changes for that rate?

i would really like to get the absolute maximum sound quality from Diva, even if it means rendering audio at 192 (or greater) and re-sampling down to the project sample rate. is this technically a good idea?

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Urs - Tue May 08, 2012 2:32 am

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Diva has been hand-tuned to sample rates 44.1kHz, 48kHz and 96kHz. The inbetween (or outside) samplerates are interpolated from there. At 64/88.2 is no audible difference here, but we haven't given 192kHz much attention.

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ddeez - Tue May 08, 2012 2:36 am

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night and day difference over here

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jupiter8 - Tue May 08, 2012 2:41 am

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Compared to what ? 44.1 or 96 kHz ?

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Urs - Tue May 08, 2012 2:41 am

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Will try it!

(we had an "insane goodness" mode tested here that uses twice or four times the oversampling of Divine, but decided that it's just not feasable)

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3ee - Tue May 08, 2012 2:50 am

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The difference is there even for 96k VS 44.1k

Always a good idea to mix @ 44.1k and export @ 96k for example, even if you convert back to 44.1k ... The phase differences between tracks of the greater resolution will be stapled there so the result will be more overall clarity.

+other good stuff with VSTs instant hi-fi "button" for the eqs too.. ..not to mention saturation/dist plugins... it depends tho but still.

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Urs - Tue May 08, 2012 3:00 am

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Well, of course you get more harmonics from distortion stages. But the filter should still be in tune, no?

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Bronto Scorpio - Tue May 08, 2012 3:05 am

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It isn't always a good idea to render at a higher setting though.
It will for example screw up almost all sample rate reducers since most of them calculate their sample rate using the host sample rate. They'll divide it by 2 for example. It will sound completely differnet at a different sample rate.
Most distortions (Ohmicide and Guitar Rig for example) will also sound completely different.

I always render at 96k but it's a good idea to check which plugins strongly depend on the sample rate first. These will mostly be FX plugins. Most synths will simply sound "better". Zebra is a good example! Sync sounds can sometimes sound much, much better at 96k!

It's also fun to set the sample rate to something really low sometimes
I often do that in Reaktor. Instant lofi awesomeness

Cheers
Dennis

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3ee - Tue May 08, 2012 3:18 am

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Hmm yeah.. I completely forgot about Ohmicide ...was blinded by the synths!

+NastyDLA also

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ddeez - Tue May 08, 2012 3:32 am

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OH MY GOD!!!!!!!! INSANE GOODNESS!!!! Could you possibly have that as just a render setting? Put that in a future update? I need that!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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thermal - Tue May 08, 2012 4:25 am

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please put this in asap!! why not feasible?

if this was an option only for rendering, nobody has to choose it if they don't want to. personally i would leave it overnight for the ultimate sound quality... sound quality must always come first!

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djanthonyw - Tue May 08, 2012 4:59 am

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It's the same thing as oversampling or the higher quality modes in plugins.. I've been saying it for a while now.

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/gear-shoot-outs-sound-file-comparisons-audio-tests/582822-running-your-software-synths-higher-sample-rates.html

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UltraJv - Tue May 08, 2012 5:11 am

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Some synths will have filters to cope with certain rates accordingly, some wont. You will hear differences but that dosnt mean better or more accurate.

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Sendy - Tue May 08, 2012 10:54 am

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I always work at 44.1, 32 bit, and infinitely prefer to have oversampling options on a per-plugin basis inside each synth/FX.

I couldn't even think about upping the sample rate at the end of a composition, because if tiny things sounded different in an arbitrary way (i.e. some things improved, others were just different) it would drive me crazy. I tend to build up music in a way that's very responsive to the sounds, and if they change even subtly, it can throw the whole thing off.

I know technically you "shouldn't" do mixing, sound design and composition, all at once, but to me, they are simply the same thing in different time domains, and they all are inter-related and inform eachother.

So basically, long story short, an "Insane" mode in Diva would be most welcome, because I can test it out as I compose and know what the difference is going to be beforehand, then put it back on Divine or Excellent when the CPU starts taking pain.

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benburling - Tue May 08, 2012 11:55 am

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please please please include a insane goodness setting.. its optional!!! please!!!!

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KBSoundSmith - Tue May 08, 2012 7:56 pm

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I'd be extremely happy with an "insane goodness" mode for rendering. One of the reasons I started using VSTs was because they're so convenient to use compared to environments like CSound, but one thing I loved (still love, I guess) about CSound is that you can render at basically any quality level desired, if you're willing to be patient for the output. All my professors would tell me that "back in the day," they'd have sounds rendering for hours, overnight, for sometimes even short sounds. Surely we can be patient rendering top-quality tracks overnight every now and then, for something as nice as Diva?

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ddeez - Tue May 08, 2012 7:59 pm

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Urs, I would say the demand is very high it seems for the Insane goodness render level...could we put a poll to see how many ppl are interested? This topic isn't even titled "Better rendering option" or something like that but it's still gotten a lot of response... something to think about

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djanthonyw - Wed May 09, 2012 3:26 am

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I vote for insane goodness as well as the possibility to set master default realtime and render quality settings.

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penguinfromdeep - Wed May 09, 2012 3:31 am

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+1 for insane goodness

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bronxsound - Wed May 09, 2012 3:36 am

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i'm pretty sure at 384kHz it would sound twice as better

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bmrzycki - Wed May 09, 2012 5:59 am

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This thread reminded me of an article by the ogg vorbis folks in regards to 192kHz Apple audio:
http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

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Arksun - Wed May 09, 2012 6:27 am

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As always with these things, the answer is 'it depends'

Some plugins you barely notice a difference at higher rates. Some plugins there's a significant improvement, some plugins can actually sound too different or worse! at a higher sample rate as it simply wasn't designed for it.

Reverb plugins in particular can change a lot at 88/96, tend to sound brighter with longer tail offs, not always in a pleasing manner though. Thats why at least one reverb plugin I know of works at a fixed internal sample rate regardless of what the host is set to. (not sure if thats public knowledge or meant to be so not mentioning the name just in case).

From what I can tell, Diva already incorporates a hell of a lot of processing to ensure it sounds damn good even @44/48k. You won't get a signifcant jump to 88/96 as you would with say D-Cam Synth Squad, either upping the DAW rate or Synth Squads internal oversampling option, which radically changes the LPF filter response.

The plugins I tend to find benefit the most though are much older ones. Like Albino 3, 88/96khz makes a HUGE difference when using the saturation knob in the filter, clears up an aweful lot of aliasing.

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ho66it - Wed May 09, 2012 7:29 am

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Thank you for the informative post!

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cron - Wed May 09, 2012 8:04 am

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Great article, but isn't digitally sampling analogue audio a completely different kettle of fish to generating samples directly via computer based synthesis? Not that I'm saying running at 96kHz is necessarily going to sound better. Most soft-synths already oversample internally, don't they?

Synth1 is a good example if you're looking for a synth that clearly sounds different at higher sampling rates though. Play right up into the ultra-high range with high filter resonance and your project running at 44.1k. Vile aliasing rubbish. Switch to 96k. Hugely diminished, but still pretty vile and decidedly different sounding aliasing rubbish. Things get even worse when you add FM. Note that I'm on 1.06 here and later versions may have sorted this.

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olikana - Wed May 09, 2012 8:40 am

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+1 for insane goodness
if it's optional why not.i can handle 9-12 insatnces of Diva on a 3+ year old cpu...bring it on if it's only 4x times more intensive.


btw oversampling other softsynth synths which do not have 0 delay feedback filters makes a huge difference cos oversampling the synth would effectively narrow the feedback delay espeonentially....but with diva the difference shouldn't be so huge.
i guess it would just remove a little of that aliasing on super fast modulations and FM (which is allready well antialiased at 44.1)

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JJBiener - Wed May 09, 2012 8:44 am

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I have to be honest here. I have never worked at anything other than 44.1K or 48K. The reason for this is twofold. First, when I was working in hardware, they all used a either 44.1 or 48, so I didn't see how bumping to 96 could provide information that didn't exist in the original sound. The other reason is that until last year, I didn't have a computer which could handle 96k let alone 192k.

Given how many people here have spoken if favor of the higher rates, I was wondering if anyone could provide x/y samples of music at say 48k, 96k and 192k. I am very curious about it and would like to see what others have been able to do.

Thanks.

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olikana - Wed May 09, 2012 8:49 am

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u r completely missiing the point and your post is completely irrelevant.

the higher sampler rate helps plugins perform their computations in more efficient manner....providing more accurate results.
it's got nothing to do with just audio playback.

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ouroboros - Wed May 09, 2012 8:50 am

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That's my experience, too. If it makes a difference, I hear it in the saturation and distortion in older plugs get cleaning up. It makes Synth1 a whole new plug

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olikana - Wed May 09, 2012 9:13 am

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2 examples i made some time ago with tal-Elek7ro (all sounds including drums) at different resolutions 192-48-96.
http://soundcloud.com/olikana/tal-elek7ro-test
the tracks were originally composed at 48k so they might sound better at 48....but the point is how different the synth sounds at different resolutions.
keep in mind that tal-elek7ro like any synth released before Diva does not have 0 delay feedback filters. ...so the filters will sound sloppy at 44 and more precise in the shaping at 192. and also sounds using FM tend to sound different. these differences at different sampling rates happen for any sofsynth i ever tried before Diva.

diva with 0 delay feedback filters and antialiased FM shuold sound more consistant at different sampling rates and i don't expect a great deal of difference at different sampling rates....but i will make a test this weekend.

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bmrzycki - Wed May 09, 2012 9:58 am

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And you completely missed the start of my post: "This thread reminded me of". I didn't say it was directly related. If you don't like it, don't read it. I figured at least 1-2 other people would find it interesting.

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JJBiener - Wed May 09, 2012 10:46 am

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Thanks, Olikana. This is exactly what I was looking for.

After listening several times on my best equipment, I have to say that the differences are so slight and subtle that I could barely distinguish them. I also couldn't say which rate was "better".

Now this could very easily be me. I spent quite a few years in bands playing very loud music, so I may have lost the ability to hear the frequencies that matter here. In any case, I don't have any great motivation to upgrade at this point. Interesting thread though.

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olikana - Wed May 09, 2012 12:18 pm

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i made a little quick test with Diva and as expected (cos of the 0 delay feedback filters and atiliased FM) there's not much difference at different resolutions. . i only tested 44-96-192 (my card doesn't go further).
only big difference the "high hat" (made with the white noise from the moog module)....that defenetly changes with the resolution (some element disappears from the high hat sound making it sound quieter and quieter- i hope it is not aliasing).


anyway here it is
same clips, no effects whatsoever, 44 then 96 then 192
then at the end a 44 vs 192 comparison with no high hat included to prove that was really the only thing changing in previous clips. any other differences, if any, are very hard to spot.

http://soundcloud.com/olikana/divatestin44vs96vs192then44vs1

and the simple "highhat patch" changing at different resolutions is this one
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/50331508/simplenoisehat.h2p

conclusion : i don't see any point to run Diva in an oversampled host unless u wanna risk encountering some odd behaviour. there is no big differences like in other synths .
an "insane goodness" option would be nice....if not no way i'll be running my host at 96khz or 192khz for hardly any difference.

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thermal - Wed May 09, 2012 1:02 pm

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thanks olikana! can you make the example file FLAC download enabled on soundcloud? also, what SRC you using?

very keen to hear developer's detailed feedback, this thread has exploded

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News From The Sky - Wed May 09, 2012 2:56 pm

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You guys just want "insane goodness" because of the name. If the exact same feature was called "very sensible garbage" I bet you wouldn't like it as much.

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fluxmind - Thu May 10, 2012 1:20 am

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No, it just turned into nonsense as usually
192khz gimme a break Day and night differences, come on probably equipment choking, that's your difference, and all that 192khz for what ? this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGL_ClYVmzs

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ddeez - Thu May 10, 2012 1:24 am

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My threads do have a tendency to explode I've been told I have that talent.

Urs i notice you've been mum on a response. Could you tell me this at least, while you were testing the insane goodness render setting was there a noticeable difference in quality of sound?

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Urs - Thu May 10, 2012 2:37 am

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We had a bug or soemthing and the filter would do strange things

I'm a bit on the fence with quality settings that only work on mixdown. It makes me feel having something "inferior" when I play live. And that I definately want to avoid.

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ddeez - Thu May 10, 2012 3:01 am

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Thanks much for the response Urs!

I may be off in this but I think I speak for a lot of people (most users of soft synths including yours) when I say the vast majority of people who produce with them don't use them live. So in my humblest of humble opinions I don't feel that should be a major concern.

I would actually get a special feeling being able to set it to an insane setting when bouncing down (not kidding) knowing that I was going the distance in getting the best sound possible.


And lol @ the face haha. So does that mean there was a noticeable difference in quality for the better when the filter wasn't acting up?

Thanks as always for the discussion my friend.

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penguinfromdeep - Thu May 10, 2012 3:10 am

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Maybe it could some kind of secret switch ... Only for those in the 'know' ...

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Howard - Thu May 10, 2012 3:33 am

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I tentatively agree with that.

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ddeez - Thu May 10, 2012 3:57 am

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Thanks Howard!!

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Gamma-UT - Thu May 10, 2012 5:31 am

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Personally, I prefer to get the sound I got while mixing during rendering rather than something different that just gives me the added warmth of confirmation bias.

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olikana - Thu May 10, 2012 6:57 am

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ofc "insane goodness" should also be a live mode not only a rendering mode. u need to be able to hear how it sounds in the mix before rendering. noone should render on... deaf faith.
with my 3 year old phenomII i bet i can run even a couple of "insane goodness" live and ppl with i5s and i7 should be able to run it very comfortably.
a better argument is...does it make any difference?... from the example i made yesterday for most sounds it seems NOT . diva allready takes care of pretty much all digital artefacts with it's current "divine mode" (which i guess includes allready a good amount of oversampling) to not warrant further oversampling..

the only sound in my test changing notably at different resolutions was the noise high hat and would be intereresting to know why.
here it is again
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/50331508/simplenoisehat.h2p


anyway tonight i'll think up of some patches which might unearth some digital artefacts....but i allready know with Diva that is indeed some task.

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cron - Thu May 10, 2012 7:53 am

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I'm reminded of my very first post at KVR:



http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12689

Seemed important 10 years ago, but with the quality of soft-synths today, I'm not so sure.

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ouroboros - Thu May 10, 2012 3:31 pm

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a brief cronology of render modes at KVR....

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cron - Thu May 10, 2012 4:28 pm

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olikana - Tue May 15, 2012 10:34 am

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in my previous test i saw that something wasn't right with a "white noise" based sound at different resolutions. so i looked further into it

WHITE NOISE TEST:
here is just white noise with open filter at 44divine - 96divine -192divine
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/50331508/44justnoise.wav
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/50331508/96justnoise.wav
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/50331508/192justnoise.wav
verdict : obviously something ain't right. (aliasing at 44 or just a bug when scaling at higher resolutions?)the difference is perceived as a lowering in volume as resolutions go up(but something tells me it ain't just volume)


EXTREME TESTS ( 44 divine vs 192 divine)
i did some tests to try and unearth as many differences as possible between running diva at 44k and 192k.
these are extreme tests and not musical..so watch your ears.

TEST 1: fm and filter modulation
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/50331508/44test1.wav
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/50331508/192test1.wav
verdict :hardly any difference (apart from osc being at different phases but that doesn't count)

TEST 2 : same as test 1 but with added shape modulation
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/50331508/44test2.wav
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/50331508/192test2.wav
verdict : aliasing (ghost artifacted tone-and even out of tune) at 44k !

TEST 3 : same as test 1 but with added white noise
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/50331508/44test3.wav
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/50331508/192test3.wav
verdict : as expected this was gonna sound different considering the results of the noise test.

all test patches are here :
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/50331508/DivaTestsOlikana.zip

conclusions:
-white noise is obviously flawed and needs looking into
-shape mod only aliases with a few shapes.
-FM and filter modulation -and pitch modulation too(not in these test files but i did test it!)- perform already extremely well at 44 divine.

"testing is the future" ;P

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Urs - Wed May 16, 2012 3:11 am

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I would have to think about it, but with digital white noise, 50% of the energy is in the upper most octave. If you move the upper octave out of the hearing spectrum by doubling the sample rate, white noise will sound about half as loud despite having the same amplitude, because 50% of the energy is outside of the hearing spectrum.

I haven't given that much thought before, but we might have to render noise at 44/48kHz and upsample it (with no energy outside the hearing spectrum) in order to preserve the relation between amplitude and perceived volume.

Regarding shape modulation I'm not quite sure what I'm hearing. Maybe we can discuss this next week when Clemens is back from vacation.

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xh3rv - Sat May 19, 2012 4:18 pm

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Some posts from William Orbit on FaceBook discussing problems with the MDNA sessions ...



This is just anecdote ... I thought it sort of pinged on a point about purely offline rendering inherently generating a sense of error to the user. Suddenly one can't trust real-time previewing, which is a source of error, and can't trust finely tuned decisions rendered offline since that can't be operated on in real-time. One could say the solution is bouncing a lot of options, but is that really a sane workflow?

Dunno, I could be making some bad assumptions as well

Also posted just to gossip about Madonna and William Orbit

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cosmicdawn - Wed May 23, 2012 12:59 am

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I read this yesterday and I was wondering what he was talking about. It doesn't look like he wanted to spend time bouncing down reverbs, and that this was something he was forced to do? But what is the point, who would ask him to do that? I know record companies want stems of their tracks so they easily can hire remixers, make edits, archiving etc. But do you think they also want to have all reverb tracks on their own? I'm still wondering what he meant...

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Vectorman - Wed May 23, 2012 5:23 am

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Interesting to hear William venting about some factors that contributed to MDNA being so disappointing. As far as his comment about M being distracted with fragrance lines and such, it does sound like the new album was just one more thing on a harried to-do list that she dashed off as fast as possible. How else to explain some of those vapid lyrics? I guess the magic she and William made on Ray of Light was a one-time thing that won't come again.

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xh3rv - Wed May 23, 2012 10:09 am

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There was another bit where he complained about just being 'co-' producer, writer, etc., I read it as saying he couldn't assert himself. Which, isn't that really sort of why one would go to William Orbit in the first place?

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xh3rv - Wed May 23, 2012 10:17 am

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Not the same, but just to plug something that kills me every time I listen to it, William Orbit produced Katie Melua's The House.

example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4E4-9yKTv_I

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Unaspected - Wed May 23, 2012 10:48 am

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More HD space taken up...

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Vectorman - Wed May 23, 2012 5:03 pm

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That was lovely. Very nice!

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thermal - Thu May 24, 2012 2:22 am

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that's all very good, but we have gone totally off topic!!

is this amazing mode being considered for the next release?

i have another question. in my experience downsampling is a major loss of quality. i assume all the audio in Diva is upsampled and then downsampled?

there must be a lot of compromise in the quality of the downsampling to make Diva run in real time. how do you think it would sound to use the recognized best quality free and open source SoX downsampling in the render modes (at max quality of course):

http://src.infinitewave.ca/
http://sox.sourceforge.net/

there is a good foobar plugin that uses this (for quick easy testing):

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=67373

you might make it an option for those who really want the live mode to be identical to the render.

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xh3rv - Thu May 24, 2012 1:36 pm

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The SoX utility does sample rate conversions between arbitrary sample rates, so interpolation routines are more costly and less streamlined than is typically done with plugs that up/down sample to fixed rates (like 48k * 2^n) internally. [e: Oh, on re-reading I think I might have mixed up what you're getting at? Downsampling post-Diva rather than internally. Seems like a DAW-centric thing though, rather than anything particular to Diva.]

Sorry for going off-topic, to restate a point without Madonna - I think there's a loss of pragmatic coherency with any render mode that's not plausible in real-time.

Additionally from the discussion, Urs's comments and olikana's samples I'm concluding that rendering at increased sample rates may actually get off-target (relative to tangible targets - sourced analog hardware). So, I guess I'm sort of unsure where 'insane goodness' would actually improve anything, what would justify a trade-off from what-you-hear-is-what-you-get.

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kmonkey - Mon May 28, 2012 5:05 am

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OP if difference is night and day i am (with no any kind of bad intention)honestly interested to hear such audio example. It should not be that hard just export them from your host.

We heard examples of noise and farts (thanks olikana) and several month ago we heard cricket frequencies etc. but could you post some real world scenario (ie good sounding melody, key, lead whatever)which clearly show that audible night and day scenario.

I am utterly interested to hear that.

thanks

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There are 61 posts in this topic.